Quick update. Because of all the travel I've been doing, we're a little behind on our preparation for the Metal Gear Solid podcast. So, next week we're going to bump up our release of the Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind podcast for the Wednesday release, then will proceed to Metal Gear Solid the week after. We hope you enjoyed the FFX series! Looking forward to diving into the rabbit hole of MGS soon!
Thanks for your time guys, Coming back to Dream Zanarkand and the thought of a time loop. This is just an idea, but society ended when the war came to a close and Sin was created. Sin stood for the end of the old Zanarkand, but also for the it's survival in a new form (Dream Zanerkand) In the opening scene it looks like the dream is returning to Sin maybe this is necessary to restart the dream / memories of the fayth ?
I'm sad to see this end, but FFX is so important to me and I've loved the thoughts and reactions to the game. It's been a blast, and like with past episodes, I hope I can share any potential thoughts I had.
That 'Square Enix is Shinra' comment was so funny. I remember going to the Square Enix Café in early 2020 before the pandemic and before the release of FF7 Remake. They were selling a bunch of Shinra merchandise and uniforms with the Shinra logo, which is so weird to me. :D
A theory about the Farplane and how it knows if someone is dead: just like any other summon, you can't have mirror matches. You can't summon Shiva if you are fighting Shiva cause she already exists in the world. So in the Farplane, you can't summon the memory of them if they already exist somewhere in the world.
@@ChildrenOfGielinor Imagine back when Yuna did her big escape from the wedding, whilst falling down, she'd be summoning for Valefor just to realize shortly before impact that Valefor can't be summoned right now because somewhere in the world another summoner is vibing with it. And Yuna just thinks: "Sh*t!". Well, journey over, I guess, unless she'd come back as an unsent like it seems to be nothing unusual for other summoners like Seymour and Belgemine. LOL
I always thought of dream Zanarkand as a sort of photo-mosaic. An amalgamation of memory snippets manifested into a "real" thing that may not be completely accurate to the original. Not dissimilar to our actual memories. This has been a great series. Thoroughly enjoyed. Thanks guys!
Casen is so passionate about interpreting this art I am almost inclined to believe him even though to me it's just one of grandmas abstract knitted blankets
Playing ffx with my mom who never played a video game before- I told her about what was said in this podcast and it made her want to experience the game
Just to add to Casen's Mandala, the 16 "ribbon" type things on the edge of the Mandala I think could represent the different locations you go to during the game 1. Baaj 2. Besaid 3. Kilika 4. Luca 5. Mi'ihen Highroad 6. Mushroom Rock Road 7. Djose 8. Moonflow 9. Guadosalam 10. Thunder Plains. 11. Macalania 12. Bikanel 13. Bevelle 14. Calm Lands 15. Gagazet 16. Zanarkand And then Dream Zanarkand is in the middle, as if the plight and struggles of these locations (Spira) prop up the existence of Dream Zanarkand, with the Fayth - praised by and worshipped by these locations - making it possible
All this mandala analysis made me think Casen would have an absolute field day with the boss arenas in FFXIV! So much detailed symbolism and I'm sure I missed most of it. I know you guys aren't really into mmos but I hope to see you cover it someday, it really brings me back to the Sakaguchi era more than any modern FF game and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised
The problem with doing this kind of podcast with an MMO or even a proper openworld game is that there's far less guidance and it requires collaboration from other players to complete. The best idea I've thought of is the podcast to create its own Guild or group and we all make an agreement to take it very seriously and basically structure it out with the help of a handful of dedicated veterans that can guide you through it. The ultimate issue is the INSANE time investment. It would become the entire podcast and we would never leave the game, not just because it's so big now but because it's basically endless. For all those reasons I'm firmly against doing an ff14 pod tbh. It's such a departure from series norms that many listeners wouldn't want to go into it anyway and in my case I already have my MMO that I sometimes dip into and it's ESO. I really don't want another. It's such an extreme investment and huge commitment for essentially the exact same result. I don't want the lads to burn themselves out on this.
@@bartandaelus359 I understand your sentiments. however, being a podcast about story, characters and lore. When it comes to Final Fantasy, XIV has it in spades and its very unfortunate if it is never explored to this degree. I understand the concerns with time commitments and how logistically impossible it is to coordinate. There is a way to do it though, the main story quests can be played mostly solo. Anyways, I hope it gets considered at some point. As a long time FF fan who has never played an MMO before, XIV has instantly jumped to the top as my favorite FF.
@@magnainsomniaI totally agree. It’s an untapped treasure trove. Most analyses I’ve seen while certainly not bad, tend to be sort of basic/surface level
Thank you guys for all the hard work! when it comes to if Dream Zanarkand is a real place if you talk to Ifrit's fayth after Yunalesca he says "Sin swam in the sea near Zanarkand. Perhaps the waking dream eased its suffering. Your father touched Sin and became real that night, foundering in the seas of Spira. How sad now, that he is caught in the tragic spiral. He is Sin. He is lost.""
The mandala explanation was fascinating, and I would be interested to hear from the designer to know exactly what was intentional and what was a happy accident (a little Barthes death of the author). But one thing I thought might be intentional, is that the symbol standing above the "X" symbolizing the summoner's death is also a cross or plus sign. You discussed earlier that this type of symbol was heavily within Tidus' character design, specifically the cross without the elongated bottom section. It might be a stretch, but maybe this could reference the fact that Tidus saves Yuna and all summoners from death. One step further, representative of the fact that he has to swap places with the summoner (Yuna) in the story, the plus symbol would then swap with the summoner symbol, meaning that the summoner symbol is now above the "X" and the plus would be below it, implying Tidus' death. For Tidus to live, the summoner must die, and for the summoner to live, Tidus must die. It would essentially reiterate that one must be sacrificed. You could even argue that this hypothetical swap would essentially cover the plus sign entirely, Tidus' death being completely overshadowed (or hidden) by the fact that the summoners may now live free of the death mark in the world of Spira (and the eyes of the people there).
About to start this episode. Not sure if yall will see this since it's old but: I was super skeptical when you both came into the game not loving it already. Wasn't sure if you'd do it justice. Boy was i wrong to ever doubt you. This was phenomenal and added so many layers to a game I absolutely love. Thank you for this and I can't wait to relisten to this on my next play through. Fucking great job fellas. Can't wait to check out the rest of your content as well
Wanted to point out something I figured you may be interested in: Yu Yevon summoned the aeon Alexander. Zanarkand scrambled is Arakzanndar. Sin functions as Yu Yevon's aeon performing as a form of Divine Judgment against arrogant magic-less humans who form civilizations and machina. Sin has the same posture as Alexander leaning on his forearms and hunchbacked Sin has buildings on his body just like how Alexander does. Alexander has originally been Babel in FF4 concept art, referencing the Tower of Babel. The parallel with Tower of Babel (Bevelle) is pretty huge here with how God punished unified mankind's technological arrogance of building a tower up to reach on par with Heaven where even floods cannot reach. God scattered mankind all across the planet and forced them into different languages. This is a lot like how Sin attacks civilizations anytime they grow too great or develop machina and resorted in machina's stigma (and emphasizes language of Al Bhed). In Yu Yevon's time, Yu Yevon was the most powerful of the magical beings and those without magic were inferior. The inferior, magicless ones developed a civilization around machina and engaged in war. As the magical ones were losing, Yu Yevon, using the power of all of its people putting them to slumber, summoned Sin/Alexander to indiscriminately attack formed civilizations and machina instinctively to protect Dream Zanarkand through Divine Judgment.
Just got a chance to play FFX for the first time at 37 and can’t express how grateful I am for these long form, book club type podcasts. Nobody is doing this type of stuff for FFX. Appreciate you guys and new Patron here bc of it 👏🏻
Hearing Casen talk about Gnosticism and pleroma just convinces me even more that you guys need to tackle Xenosaga. It'll be a bigger challenge to bite off than Xenogears, but I think it will be so worth it.
For the question about how the Fayth seem to reproduce: I've always interpreted it as basically Zanarkand exists in a state where the same people are reincarnated essentially to an extent, but aren't the same always. So perhaps years before he was born, Jecht was someone else, and when he "died", the Fayth dreamed of a new version of him after. That, or they make vague shapes of people and as part of their growing desire to be free, they stop putting effort into making them the same.
My first Podcast watching you guys - definitely sticking around You guys really did justice to a game so close to our hearts, was really insightful Was an awesome ride
These podcasts have been consistently great, but I *highly* recommend the Final Fantasy 8 podcasts. I have re-listened to those countless times, and it is what birthed my passionate love for FF8. The Xenogears one was great as well, but was quite long lol
Hey guys, thank you so much for this podcast. FFX is my favorite game, so important to me and you guys made it even more meaningful. Im really looking forward to the next podcast series! ❤️
Nooooo you guys didn't talk about that last shot of Tidus in the iconic Yuna Sending FMV after all....this pyrefly sorcery been bothering me for 10+ years! =P Well, at least we got Casen's unexpectedly badass analysis of the Mandala this episode! This series has been fantastic and is undoubtedly the best FFX content on youtube (besides certain music covers, go check out Marc Papeghin's FFX prog rock haha). Bittersweet to see it come to an end but wouldn't want you guys to get more exhausted than the Fayth! As Japanese Yuna would say.... "Thank You" for all your hard work & collaboration!
Ha, thanks! Honestly, man, I couldn't make sense of it so I didn't bring it up. My guess is that they wanted him there for framing, and it has little bearing on the world or story.
@@CasenSperry No problem dude, that's fair! I guess I'm just tricking myself into thinking there's a deeper easter egg considering how much effort FMVs take, especially an iconic scene. But a purely composition explanation seems also valid, if nothing else!
Really enjoyed these episodes on FFX, with it being one of my favourite games. As a fan, there were lots I knew already but i've learned a ton from these episodes. Very excited for MGS! Keep it up lads.
absolutely loved going on this journey with yall- I finally played and finished FFX as these were coming out so playing and listening along has been a blast: thanks so much!!! ♡
This has been the best FFX content on the internet. Been one of my favorite games ever since it came out. Been a blast coming back every week to hang and listen to this analysis. Thanks for this! This FFX series and the Xenogears series are truly next level. Recommended them to several friends. Excited to come back for future games as well.
Add on top of that we've already covered what we saw before was a dream recollection....so 1000 years plus an inaccurate picture of what it was like...of course it will look different
Yeah it’s def the same building. The archway you walk through is the exact same minus the statues at the beginning. Weird that they missed that. Simple google image search would’ve fixed that lol
That mandala is crazy. No, I don't think you're reading too much into it, nor do I think all that symbolism is an accident or a coincidence. Game design is extremely utilitarian. Once again, thank you very much Mike and Casen for what was an incredible series on one of my favourite Final Fantasy games. Every single episode I learned something new. I would also like to thank the people in the comments because I've also learned a lot by reading your thoughts and ideas as well. Can't wait for Metal Gear Solid. Even though I've never played the hands myself, I've seen reviews and understand how good they are.
This is a very good discussion. I have been following the channel prior to the name brand change and when Casen still made cover guides. Nice to see the channel is still progressing nicely and making a really good discussion on games I thought I firmly understood.
Hey guys! Just wanted to say I LOVE the addition for a final episode where all spoilers are off the table and you guys go back and analyze previous scenes. I would love it going forward if you did this for all your podcasts. Hope everything is well and hope travel is okay for you Mike!
I usually listen to Spotify, but I needed to see what Casen was talking about lol Great video as always! 15 episodes for FFX is absolutely exciting! Mike bites his nails a lot HAHAHA get well soon :) Can't wait for Metal Gear Solid!
One thing to note is Tidus waking up and swimming to the surface mirrors him waking up at Besaid near the beginning. He is "born" into the world both times from Dream Zanarkand
Note: Anima was not an available aeon until kid Seymour arrived in Zanarkand, and his mom was made into a fayth. Just a note regarding how many aeons may be required to complete the pilgrimmage.
This exact thing made me wonder if all of the Aeons are actually someone else's final summoning that failed. As in, they were never able to face or defeat Sin with them.
@@bartandaelus359 If this would have been the case I think the Al-bhed would have not tried to stop summoners from getting the final summoning specificly... They are concerned about the summoners dieing for a lost cause. Seymor himself is the perfect example that binding an Aeon onto a stone is not a lethal process... And yes, Seymor found a way out of that but I don't think Yunalesca wasn't really on board with summoners trying to trick their way out of the cicle and Show them how to create an Aeon instead of fulfilling their part in the cicle of death.
Casen: "This design means this and that..." Mandala Artist: "I was just drawing something cool..." Listening to ya'll talk about this game in such depth reminds me of my high-school English teachers. Having us find meaning between every single thing in literature. lmao. All jokes aside, this is amazing. I love hearing about this stuff. And hearing how passionate you are about it just makes me more engaged. I would have never found this deep stuff on my own
Thank you so much for this series. I’ve learned a lot about appreciation of games and you’ve both really opened my eyes to thinking more about the games I play. Excited to join y’all on your next journey!
1:00:00 the only problem with the Al Bhed being right, and that’s why Tidus sees his mom, is it doesn’t explain why Tidus wouldn’t see Jecht. So there’s gotta be something to the “dead or alive” thing.
Wow, honored that my comment got screen time! Hopefully it wasn't overly ranty lol. Loved this series, guys. RE: Why the Church of Yevon is anti-machina. I wanna say that Maechen talks about this somewhere, but maybe my own memories have been warped over time and it's just my own headcanon, but it's a result of Yu Yevon's original intent with Sin to destroy *only* Bevelle, the larger, more technologically advanced city. But as Yu Yevon lost his humanity by being at the center of Sin, he forgot about Zanarkand altogether, so Sin instead just attacks any city that's somewhat large and looks technologically advanced. To what's left of Yu Yevon, there's no difference between Kilika village and Zanarkand. So it's not that Sin was created knowing it would lay waste to Bevelle as well as Zanarkand, but that the destruction of Zanarkand, and Sin/YY becoming an uncontrollable WMD was a total accident. (Sidenote: I also think that the creation of Dream Zanarkand only occurred once the Fayth realized Sin and Yu Yevon were out of control, as a way of mourning and consoling themselves, but that's a whole other bag of worms...) The church of Yevon outlawing machina is mainly a means of deterring Sin from attacking. The founders knew from Yunalesca that Sin is attracted to large cities with machina, so it became a core tenet of the religion. In general, the teachings seem to have one of two purposes: make civilization look like an unappetizing target for Sin, and to keep the people of Spira in a controllable state. Outlawing machina achieves both.
Can you please explain why you believe Dream Zanarkand was created by the Fayth only after Sin went wild? What else would the Fayth be used for if not to summon that? It does seem strange to me that Dream Zanarkand would be located in the middle of the southern sea, a whole continent away from both Zanarkand and the Fayth. I suppose it's possible they just thought it made for a good hiding spot, and as far as X-2.5 is concerned Zanarkand had bases on what would become Besaid and Baaj nearby, but I wonder if there's another reason for it.
FFX has been my favourite game of all time since I first played it as an 8 year old (no, I didn't complete it as a kid). Thank you for doing such an excellent podcast analyzing it. I knew it was a game with a lot of depth but I had no idea to what extent the developers poured themselves and their ideas into it. You guys were able to bring all of that to light with the help of the community of course. Been a fan of the channel for what feels like forever (back when you first did retrospectives for FF games), this was your guys' best work that I have seen.
Hey I just wanted to apologize for a comment I made on the first video of this series (I think it was the first video), where I mentioned Auron and the flask toasting at the beginning. I didn't realize to what length you were avoiding spoilers and I didn't think that fell into spoiler territory at the time since we hardly knew very many of the characters, but I totally understand how it could be. You both did such an amazing job dancing around spoilers throughout the game and I wanted to thank you both for such an amazing journey with FFX!
Glad to see the Zanarkand dome mentioned. I always thought it was the blitzball arena, though as a kid I never made the connection between blitzball and Yevon
I can't bring myself to finish this podcast. Mostly because I dont want this series to end. FFX has meant the world to me and has helped me get through the hardest times in my life. Thank you for breathing new life into the game and the same way I never wanted FFX to end, I never wanted this podcast to end. Thank you guys for everything and you guys have earned a new patron.
I've heard somewhere that your dreams can never create a face that you haven't seen before. Whether you saw someone on TV or real life, that is the only mental database your dream can use. As time goes on, that memory of a face might not look exactly like it did decades ago. Same dream as before, but something is always a bit off. In Dream Zanarkand, the same Fayth have been dreaming the same dream for 1000 years. The dream world continues to cycle through its old memories and the people of the past to try to make new dreams. Or someone later (after the fall of the Orignial Zanarkand) becomes a Fayth for the final summoning, and that new fayth say 600 yrs later adds a new layer of memories and history to that constant dream. That's why Tidus resembles so much of Shuyin, I think. Shuyin was a real person from Zanarkand and also a great blitzer. He was arrested and eventually died for trying to save a summoner. His memory ended that way. Maybe his will was weaved into Tidus' conception. The Fayth said they were so tired of dreaming. I keep thinking that their exhaustion from trying to keep their dream afloat caused some "glitches" in its structure. Maybe that's how Jecht was accidentally Ejected from Dream Zanarkand. Once he learned of Spira & Yevon during his journey with Auron & Braska did his whole plan to end the dream finally start to become real. Casen the Mandala!! 🤯 I think you nailed everything you said, but could the inner farplane at the corners of the world be Zanarkand? Yuna DID say it was at the world's edge. Love you guys & thank you for this podcast! Excited for MGS!
Ever since Casen mentioned the mandala at the beginning, I’ve been thinking about it as I played and tried to figure out what it meant. The conclusion I came to is kinda different, though I think Casen’s analysis makes pretty good sense. My take on the mandala is that it is Spira as seen through the eye or Sin, or reflected in his eye. The thrones protruding inwards to me looked like iris dilators and I initially thought they were meant to represent the fayth, who in a way enable continued existence Sin via the final aeon. Furthermore, the mandala is also a microcosm of Sin’s relationship to Spira. I caught the same thing as Casen with the corners of the square connecting to the circle, but I saw that as Sin’s encroachment and presence in Spira, it being a suffocating one. Oh and I totally forgot to mention, the first thing that made me see the circle as Sin was that it looks very similar to the form Sin took in the opening, when he sucked in Auron & Tidus. They were both brought into the center of the “eye” to be transported to Spira. Idk if there’s any legitimacy to my take on the mandala but I will concede that Casen’s analysis is definitely more thorough and likely the accurate one
Some of the Rings of the mandala also resemble Ifrit and Ixion too, one ring looks like fire and one like lightning in the order you aquire them moving outward. The small one inside the fire ring I suppose could represent Valefor. The one after lightning doesn't really look like ice... but it does look like headstones... and you get Shiva and Kill Seymor at almost the same time. Maybe the other rings could also represent the Aeons as well.
Been listening in on these vids while my tax season kept me busy the 2 months. Easily one of the best games I've ever played. You guys did a great job analyzing it and now I'm going to have to play back through it once my job slows down. Looking forward to a 10-2 series at some point.
The mandala also looks like a detailed eyeball, with a symbol within the pupil of the eye. The eye of the world is staring at the summoner, the same way Tidus stares at Yuna, and the same way the eye of the world used to stare at Tidus in Zanarkand (culminating in Sin).
Yes! I didn't mention it, but I think that is probably correct as you can take the layout for the Besaid temple to be the Yevon Symbol (the one I mentioned in previous episodes as being an eye with two wings and a person standing underneath). Well, where the "eye" of that symbol would go puts it right where that Mandala is!
What if the center of the mandala (the one that is a smaller mandala) is describing Yu Yevon? He is a summoner who is the center point of Spira thematically. He summons constantly and every time a new Sin is created, it adds another layer to the spiral and another zoomed in layer to the mandala. As far as the number 12, it could be the 12 active Aeons being summoned. The ten aeons in game plus Tidus and Jecht. Just a thought.
The way I see it is the memory of original Zanarkard is like seed code, kinda like how a procedurally generated game uses it to generate an area, and since its isolated from the rest of the world and limited to concepts the faayth memorized/understood, memory people could live and reproduce for the generations since the summoning and consistently produced the same results. Tidus isn't Shuuyin, he's the descendant of Shuuyin's memory. Also, the solution to the farplane issue and Tidus's mom is simple. First of all pyreflies record memories and pool them into the realm of memory that aeons come from, and it's tied to both the far plane and sin. It's like a source of energy/power that is more than just a room under Guadosalam called the Farplane, that's the a point it can be accessed at, another being inside Sin's core. Because all memories are recorded and sent there via pyreflies, it makes sense for Zanarkand dream people to appear there, they're beings compose of the stuff. Also, when a being is summoned from the memory realm, it exists seperate from the memory pool in the physical realm. When the summoning ends, the aeon returns to the shared pool. The is how the memories of the summoned Zanarkard people can be a part of a memory pool in Spira, but they would still be ignorant of Spira.
Fascinating stuff with the mandala. Maybe the X in the center being in the title of the game was too obvious for you to point out, but that's the only thing I could figure out by myself.
I might've said this a little already in a previous episode's comments, but this podcast for FFX made me appreciate the game so much more than I did. I always have ranked it as my personal third favorite Final Fantasy, but replaying it this year during this podcast REALLY opened my eyes to how amazing it truly is. My two favorite Final Fantasy games, FF7 and FF8, are up there because they came out an impressionable time in my childhood when I could understand the power of storytelling in video games. I could never fully explain why FFX was #3 though, other than that I just liked it more than some of the others. Now being a much older adult, this podcast actually helped me articulate why I love it so much. You guys helped me appreciate and understand things I never picked up on before. So thanks! I'm really looking forward to MGS. I haven't played it in a very long time, but last year I watched a younger member of Kinda Funny play the first four mainline MGS games all last year, and I had a blast seeing the games through a younger person's eyes who had never played them before. And while they are dated in many respects, especially the first, it's also amazing how influential and ahead of their time they really were in so many respects. I mean, I learned about DARPA in 1999 (I played it a year after it came out) because of this game. What kid in the 90s knew about DARPA? Any kid who played MGS, that's who.
I have a theory about the question involving the life span of the people in the dream state of Zanarkand. They could have very well had a Groundhog Day/statis for the first 990 years. Then the fayth intervened, broke the cycle, sending Jecht to Spira. Thus, the dream world began a new cycle allowing the dream people to “recreate” and grow, having memories and the like. In Spira Zanarkand, the glowing fayth rocks outside of Gagazet never faded. Thus, the dream people never died or faded away.
Here's another cool thing you can get from the mandala. The subversion of the role of the summoner. To me, you have the farplane withe the pireflies and the gods in it summoning Spiera, that center area after the separation. Spiera is an aeon. That is why people become pireflies and fiends. The original role of the summoner is to send them to the far plane, a sender if you will. But at some point, they chose to use the energy of the pireflies instead of sending it. Some became the faith, taking on the role sleeping gods, and some "senders" became summoners, bringing forth aeons like the gods created brought forth Speira. That is why there is an "X" there. That's the original role of a summoner, it was crossed out and replaced with a mirror reflecting the world. A summoner (like Yevon) creates an aeon (like dream Zanarkand) using the pireflies in the world like the gods creating Spiera from the pireflies in the farplane. This is also why the mandala is here, at the first temple. This is where you go to subvert the role of sender and become a summoner. The difference between dream Zanarkand and Speira is that Speira is a dream of creation has the ability to change like most dreams do, but dream Zanarkand is a dream of remembrance where it it can not change. At least, that's what I get from it.
The idea of Spira itself being an aeon/dream of the gods built from pyreflies from the Farplane is really interesting. Makes me wonder what created the Farplane too. Maybe it's aeons all the way up?
Thank you guys for this podcast. Amazing as usual! I've always debated whether my 2nd favourite Final Fantasy (after FFVII!) is FFVIII or FFX. I enjoyed both series you've done, and after finishing this it has reminded me that FFX is simply a masterpiece. It may even be pushing for my number 1 spot!
Another cool aspect of the center of the mandala is that the small square, in conjunction with the X, creates two overlapping 4’s. A square and an X both have 4 distinct points. 4, in Japanese, often symbolizes death. So two “deaths” allow for the summoner to transcend (4+4=8) death. What two party members are pivotal in Yuna finding an alternative solution? Auron, an unsent, and Tidus, who takes on the role of the sacrifice.
You pass through the very same entrance way into the stadium in Zanarkand, its the same place where Tidus recovers consiousness and meets Auron after his losing his grip on the ledge as the blitzball sphere empties.
Well chaps, it's a been a fascinating ride and you have managed to make my favourite game THAT much better to me! We started in familiar territory, but holy moly did you guys connect so many small dots! Mainly all the symbolism that runs through the game, art and game design I can get but even as little as the Hibiscus got my Lightbulbs glowing. The Mandala blew me away, A hardy salute to Cason for fitting the bill perfectly. Fantastic studf lads. My brain is ready for MGS. (For the record, this kinda means we ought to take Nomura a little more seriously now, eh? Hmmm...that'll be tricky)
I would believe that the grey separation of the inner and outer worlds is Sin. Sin is what branches between them. As well, the pillars that flank the 4 anti cardinal directions are the inverse water falls in the far plane. Those points connect the outer and inner far plane.
perhaps the flower at the centre is yu yevon and the box is sin (the armour protecting him) the x represents the fact the yu-yevon has no self control. that would mean that the church is containing it all. that would likely be the kind of mandala the church would design for propeganda
I toyed with the idea of Sin being the center of the mandala, and it can work, for sure, as Yu Yevon is a summoner, and death is at the center, and the walls are like armor. Sin even presents himself as a giant blitzball sphere, and the Mandala can be read as being blitzball for sure. That interpretation is certainly valid. But the flower imagery is so powerful on Yuna, being her character design and even her name, so I felt that Yuna transcending the world fit better there than Yu Yevon transcending the world, despite that making more sense in the world of the game. It could be that their legend of Yu Yevon has contained within it a hidden possibility that a summoner will free them all from Sin, from the inside.
Just finished Casen's explanation of the mandala and my mind is blown and I have some thoughts and questions. I wonder if it's a coincidence that the mandala is centered by an "x" meaning "death" and that this is FF10 or "X." I also wonder what the significance of the mandala being seen in Yuna's first acquired aeon's temple, Valefor, is. Valefor is a flying aeon with no particular association to an element, and Yuna summons it when she does her leap of faith during the wedding scene to save herself. Does this imply anything else relevant to Yuna overcoming (specifically her own) death maybe? Casen said that Tidus has crosses all over his body, and given that he ends up becoming the sacrifice at the end, and the cross Casen mentions on Yuna's outfit being removed in the HD version perhaps allude to Yuna's death being a bait and switch with Tidus... maybe? Because also he is "reborn" kind of at the end of the game, so perhaps that tinier circle and square thing Mike brought up also includes Tidus' possibility of transcending his death in a manner even more reminiscent of Jesus' resurrection? Parts of the mandala that seem related to death appear to be in white (the stamen that the summoner stands on) and some parts appear to be in black (the semi-circle bits around around square) and I was wondering is that related to how in the West we see death as being represented by black but Eastern cultures see the reverse? Or am I reading too much into that? Also why on earth did the developers decide to scrap the impact and significance of all this brilliance for Eien no Daishou and Will?? WHY. IT MAKES NO SENSE. I don't recommend anyone looking those up. In my humble opinion, they're rubbish. Otherwise I'm going to finish the podcast in relative peace. Thanks Mike and Casen, your content is awesome and you guys are awesome! Edit: also, Casen, you need to play FFXIV and just go ham with the symbolism and connections and Nietzsche ideas. Or I need you to.
Thank you Mike and Casen for these podcasts. 1: Not to weigh to much on X-2, but I believe that Maechen is an unsent in that game. That would fit with the symbols on his garb and with those implications from the mandala. 2: I believe that when in the farplane, pyreflies resonate with memories and dreams of people in a similar way they do with the Fayth. The result is a summoning of the person's memory. The living person acts in place of the fayth and the pyreflies replicate the person's dreams, just not as complete and the summoning is transient and temporary. However, in cases where the memory is tied to strong emotion (like Jyscal) it can manifest. But this only happens when the pyreflies have the template of the dead person already within their collective (being sent). Otherwise they wouldn't be able to recreate the dream. 3: Is it ever explained HOW buff daddy Jecht gets out of dream Zanarkand?
@@megamike15 Is that canon within the text of X or is that something that was added later? Because it sounds... kinda crap and not in line with what X would have done.
I'm watching this 9 months later. Casen should check out elder futhark. The rune for G is an X, and the meanings for this rune in particular mirrors and expands on much of what he has said about this mandala and the themes of ffX itself. Futhark runes are interesting, being a combination of hieroglyphs, phonetic glyphs and sacred geometry. Seeing the recurring themes of norse summons, it's entirely possible Square was drawing from this as well. Love your podcasts, both of you. Thanks
Maybe it was mentionned many time before, but the idea to run electricity to shape water is also seen in Riven: The Sequel to Myst, where water in the world of Riven react in the same way.
1:00:30 One point of the farplane sceene is that people that are not dead/send can not show up! When the people in the far plane are made from YOUR memories, how does the far plane know who is dead or not, when YOU don't know it? Jecht does NOT appear because Auron told him to be Sin, Tidus just has not accepted it, but Tidusses mother DOES and Tidus is schocked about it, because to his knowledge she may have survived Sins attack on Zanarkhandt. (Rewatching the Sceene it is implied she died from lovelost-sickness - RIP) 1:19:30 Why are peole so hung up that Dream Zhanarkhandt is a place that follows physical reality, look at how the inside of sin is a fever dream and we can not see guado salam from the far plane.
On why dreams can appear in the farplane but the living do not, I think that the pyreflies can recreate anything they've touched, retaining a sort of memory of what they have been before. Since things in Spira are made of pyreflies, the ones that make up a living person have not yet returned to the collective, the memory hasn't yet been taken back to the collective. But when they die and return that memory is now accessible to the whole, even able to be summoned, which is probably what happens at the farplane. Since "dreams" (summons) are also made of pyreflies there's not really much difference, when they die those pyreflies take the memory of what they were back just the same, they probably would do so for any object in Spira.
@40:47 One problem with this interpretation though is that only two of the maesters are dead, Seymour and Mika. Unless you intend it to foreshadow the death of Kinoc and Kelk, but this goes against the general interpretation Casen gives with respect to influence from the farplane. In any case, kudos to the interpretative skills. While some of it may be looser, there is no doubting at least some intention here.
Never really seen any reason to fuss over the Shinra stuff. It's not that X takes place on the same world as VII, it takes place in the same universe or galaxy. Which ultimately does not matter all that much for either game (with VII already having a more cosmic approach to worldbuilding with Jenova as an alien parasite), and is just a fun little easter egg.
it's a shame we didn't get to hear your guys thoughts on anima and the baaj temple as well as the temple of the stolen fayth. but lots of great great stuff thank you guys!
I never realized until this point, that Sin was a spiritual weapon with the instinct to react to/ destroy machina... in the same way that Vegnagun was a machina weapon programmed to react to/ destroy humans/heightened emotion. They are the two superweapons of the war. More yin and yang themes there!
hearing about the zanderkand-bivell wa as they read it is interesting because that story basically sounds like a traditional jrpg story but then ffx is the aftermath and healing of all that. and though i never finished x2 it seems x2 explores the "well we saved the world now what, now who am i now that that piece of my identity has shifted so drastically" which is cool
Not sure if you guys have seen it but, Valkyrie Profile Leneth is getting a port to the PS4 and PS5 because the new Valkyrie Elysium game. I think it would be a great game for this podcast format, albeit with the asterisk that you need to get ending A for the whole plot. And given the fact the game is coming out in the 29th of september, there is time for you to plan for the podcast to coincide with the release of a bit after it.
@@nickburose8286 Not sure if it will, because it seems the port will be digital only, and for now it is only a bonus of the special edition of Elysium, with a promise of being sold at a later date
Thanks for the in-depth analysis Casen. Very interesting and a lot to think about and consider and now I'm interested in learning about symbolism. Can we get a proper list of the books mentioned in the description? I'm seeing some books with similar names and not sure which author is correct.
Jung's "Man and his Symbols" is a good starting point but I also highly recommend the "Memories, Dreams and Recollections" audio book because it's so easy to listen to and gives a lot of foundational context for his ideas in other works.
The Jung works mentioned here are great. The ones I mentioned in the podcast are A Beginners Guide to Constructing the Universe, A Dictionary of Symbols, and Sacred Geometry
Late to the commenting party, but my take on the Farplane not showing you living people is that people's souls seem to be made of pyreflies, and the reason you don't see living people in the Farplane is that the pyreflies carrying the information of that person's soul haven't returned to resonate with the thoughts of the person seeking to see them yet. You're sending out the signal, but the receiver is still out in the world, not inside the Farplane.
I am forever glad I found this podcast. FFX is one of my top 5 favorite games (possibly even #1) of all time. Have two people getting so into the story and looking at nearly every detail has been such an amazing ride. Thank you guys so much for talking about it and glad to see you guys had so much fun talking about it. whenever play X-2 I would love to see it on this podcast. Definitely gonna check out the X-2 playlist. Now to get into metal gear solid 😂👌🏻here we go
I a way Tidus was also a Christ figure. He disappeared after defeating sin. A beautiful allegory for ridding humanity of it's sins requiring the sacrifice of Christ to do so. Tidus was also an allegory for the immaculate birth and how this soul that was gods sun left their world and entered ours.
On the Blitz all arena in Zanarkand: I do believe it's the same one. It's been a thousand years remember, I think it's entirely possible that the statues that were so iconic in the opening were simply destroyed or lost to time. It also plays the same music from the Blitzball menu which ties in very heavily to the sport as religion theory.
Quick update. Because of all the travel I've been doing, we're a little behind on our preparation for the Metal Gear Solid podcast. So, next week we're going to bump up our release of the Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind podcast for the Wednesday release, then will proceed to Metal Gear Solid the week after. We hope you enjoyed the FFX series! Looking forward to diving into the rabbit hole of MGS soon!
MGS is so dense in the later games, you will need 2 episodes every hour of gameplay.
Good luck!
yes nice one looking forward on nausicaa and mgs :)
Thanks for your time guys,
Coming back to Dream Zanarkand and the thought of a time loop. This is just an idea, but society ended when the war came to a close and Sin was created.
Sin stood for the end of the old Zanarkand, but also for the it's survival in a new form (Dream Zanerkand)
In the opening scene it looks like the dream is returning to Sin maybe this is necessary to restart the dream / memories of the fayth ?
Holy crap you guys are doing Nausicaa next!? I'm so excited 😊 🤗 🤪
How far in are you guys planning on playing MGS for the first episode? Also, PS version or Gamecube?
Love the dynamic of mike being story analytical vs casen being symbolically analytical. Another great series lads, keep it up.
Yeah its a great balance. I haven't really ever encountered anyone else doing game analysis like them.
45:00 we are blessed to have Casen.
Looking forward for whenever we get a video explaining every single detail he noted.
assuming these aren't the early stages of schizophrenia I agree
@@ataridc haha
I'm sad to see this end, but FFX is so important to me and I've loved the thoughts and reactions to the game. It's been a blast, and like with past episodes, I hope I can share any potential thoughts I had.
That 'Square Enix is Shinra' comment was so funny. I remember going to the Square Enix Café in early 2020 before the pandemic and before the release of FF7 Remake. They were selling a bunch of Shinra merchandise and uniforms with the Shinra logo, which is so weird to me. :D
A theory about the Farplane and how it knows if someone is dead: just like any other summon, you can't have mirror matches. You can't summon Shiva if you are fighting Shiva cause she already exists in the world. So in the Farplane, you can't summon the memory of them if they already exist somewhere in the world.
But didnt we fight another summoner after luca to test our strength and we can both summon valefor?
@@nova12332 No, she summons Ifrit and you can't summon Ifrit against her.
@@Karifean oh true. i forgot
@@ChildrenOfGielinor Imagine back when Yuna did her big escape from the wedding, whilst falling down, she'd be summoning for Valefor just to realize shortly before impact that Valefor can't be summoned right now because somewhere in the world another summoner is vibing with it. And Yuna just thinks: "Sh*t!". Well, journey over, I guess, unless she'd come back as an unsent like it seems to be nothing unusual for other summoners like Seymour and Belgemine. LOL
@@annjune7338 Yeah but people would have covered their eyes because of Rikku's thingamabob...
I always thought of dream Zanarkand as a sort of photo-mosaic. An amalgamation of memory snippets manifested into a "real" thing that may not be completely accurate to the original. Not dissimilar to our actual memories.
This has been a great series. Thoroughly enjoyed. Thanks guys!
This Mandala breakdown is the wildest black hole of a nerd lecture I have ever seen and I have seen an 8 hour video essay on Morrowind
Casen is so passionate about interpreting this art I am almost inclined to believe him even though to me it's just one of grandmas abstract knitted blankets
@@JediMimic Haha! Thank you?
Playing ffx with my mom who never played a video game before- I told her about what was said in this podcast and it made her want to experience the game
That is amazing, I hope she enjoys it!!! It's always so great to see new people showing interest in this story.
That's so cool, did she like it?
Just to add to Casen's Mandala, the 16 "ribbon" type things on the edge of the Mandala I think could represent the different locations you go to during the game
1. Baaj
2. Besaid
3. Kilika
4. Luca
5. Mi'ihen Highroad
6. Mushroom Rock Road
7. Djose
8. Moonflow
9. Guadosalam
10. Thunder Plains.
11. Macalania
12. Bikanel
13. Bevelle
14. Calm Lands
15. Gagazet
16. Zanarkand
And then Dream Zanarkand is in the middle, as if the plight and struggles of these locations (Spira) prop up the existence of Dream Zanarkand, with the Fayth - praised by and worshipped by these locations - making it possible
All this mandala analysis made me think Casen would have an absolute field day with the boss arenas in FFXIV! So much detailed symbolism and I'm sure I missed most of it. I know you guys aren't really into mmos but I hope to see you cover it someday, it really brings me back to the Sakaguchi era more than any modern FF game and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised
The problem with doing this kind of podcast with an MMO or even a proper openworld game is that there's far less guidance and it requires collaboration from other players to complete. The best idea I've thought of is the podcast to create its own Guild or group and we all make an agreement to take it very seriously and basically structure it out with the help of a handful of dedicated veterans that can guide you through it.
The ultimate issue is the INSANE time investment. It would become the entire podcast and we would never leave the game, not just because it's so big now but because it's basically endless.
For all those reasons I'm firmly against doing an ff14 pod tbh. It's such a departure from series norms that many listeners wouldn't want to go into it anyway and in my case I already have my MMO that I sometimes dip into and it's ESO. I really don't want another. It's such an extreme investment and huge commitment for essentially the exact same result. I don't want the lads to burn themselves out on this.
@@bartandaelus359 I understand your sentiments. however, being a podcast about story, characters and lore. When it comes to Final Fantasy, XIV has it in spades and its very unfortunate if it is never explored to this degree. I understand the concerns with time commitments and how logistically impossible it is to coordinate. There is a way to do it though, the main story quests can be played mostly solo. Anyways, I hope it gets considered at some point. As a long time FF fan who has never played an MMO before, XIV has instantly jumped to the top as my favorite FF.
@@magnainsomniaI totally agree. It’s an untapped treasure trove. Most analyses I’ve seen while certainly not bad, tend to be sort of basic/surface level
Thank you guys for all the hard work! when it comes to if Dream Zanarkand is a real place if you talk to Ifrit's fayth after Yunalesca he says "Sin swam in the sea near Zanarkand. Perhaps the waking dream eased its suffering.
Your father touched Sin and became real that night, foundering in the seas of Spira. How sad now, that he is caught in the tragic spiral. He is Sin. He is lost.""
The mandala explanation was fascinating, and I would be interested to hear from the designer to know exactly what was intentional and what was a happy accident (a little Barthes death of the author). But one thing I thought might be intentional, is that the symbol standing above the "X" symbolizing the summoner's death is also a cross or plus sign. You discussed earlier that this type of symbol was heavily within Tidus' character design, specifically the cross without the elongated bottom section. It might be a stretch, but maybe this could reference the fact that Tidus saves Yuna and all summoners from death. One step further, representative of the fact that he has to swap places with the summoner (Yuna) in the story, the plus symbol would then swap with the summoner symbol, meaning that the summoner symbol is now above the "X" and the plus would be below it, implying Tidus' death. For Tidus to live, the summoner must die, and for the summoner to live, Tidus must die. It would essentially reiterate that one must be sacrificed. You could even argue that this hypothetical swap would essentially cover the plus sign entirely, Tidus' death being completely overshadowed (or hidden) by the fact that the summoners may now live free of the death mark in the world of Spira (and the eyes of the people there).
Sad to see this series end, it has been such an awesome ride and loved it through and through. Looking forward to MGS!
About to start this episode. Not sure if yall will see this since it's old but:
I was super skeptical when you both came into the game not loving it already. Wasn't sure if you'd do it justice. Boy was i wrong to ever doubt you. This was phenomenal and added so many layers to a game I absolutely love. Thank you for this and I can't wait to relisten to this on my next play through. Fucking great job fellas. Can't wait to check out the rest of your content as well
Wanted to point out something I figured you may be interested in:
Yu Yevon summoned the aeon Alexander.
Zanarkand scrambled is Arakzanndar.
Sin functions as Yu Yevon's aeon performing as a form of Divine Judgment against arrogant magic-less humans who form civilizations and machina.
Sin has the same posture as Alexander leaning on his forearms and hunchbacked
Sin has buildings on his body just like how Alexander does.
Alexander has originally been Babel in FF4 concept art, referencing the Tower of Babel.
The parallel with Tower of Babel (Bevelle) is pretty huge here with how God punished unified mankind's technological arrogance of building a tower up to reach on par with Heaven where even floods cannot reach. God scattered mankind all across the planet and forced them into different languages. This is a lot like how Sin attacks civilizations anytime they grow too great or develop machina and resorted in machina's stigma (and emphasizes language of Al Bhed).
In Yu Yevon's time, Yu Yevon was the most powerful of the magical beings and those without magic were inferior. The inferior, magicless ones developed a civilization around machina and engaged in war. As the magical ones were losing, Yu Yevon, using the power of all of its people putting them to slumber, summoned Sin/Alexander to indiscriminately attack formed civilizations and machina instinctively to protect Dream Zanarkand through Divine Judgment.
Just got a chance to play FFX for the first time at 37 and can’t express how grateful I am for these long form, book club type podcasts. Nobody is doing this type of stuff for FFX. Appreciate you guys and new Patron here bc of it 👏🏻
Hearing Casen talk about Gnosticism and pleroma just convinces me even more that you guys need to tackle Xenosaga. It'll be a bigger challenge to bite off than Xenogears, but I think it will be so worth it.
For the question about how the Fayth seem to reproduce: I've always interpreted it as basically Zanarkand exists in a state where the same people are reincarnated essentially to an extent, but aren't the same always. So perhaps years before he was born, Jecht was someone else, and when he "died", the Fayth dreamed of a new version of him after. That, or they make vague shapes of people and as part of their growing desire to be free, they stop putting effort into making them the same.
So there would be no way to resist the stories.... I'm so glad I stuck with FFX
My first Podcast watching you guys - definitely sticking around
You guys really did justice to a game so close to our hearts, was really insightful
Was an awesome ride
These podcasts have been consistently great, but I *highly* recommend the Final Fantasy 8 podcasts.
I have re-listened to those countless times, and it is what birthed my passionate love for FF8. The Xenogears one was great as well, but was quite long lol
Mike's just "yeah let's get this over with I feel terrible, man".
Caissen stepped-up big time.
Hey guys, thank you so much for this podcast. FFX is my favorite game, so important to me and you guys made it even more meaningful.
Im really looking forward to the next podcast series! ❤️
Nooooo you guys didn't talk about that last shot of Tidus in the iconic Yuna Sending FMV after all....this pyrefly sorcery been bothering me for 10+ years! =P
Well, at least we got Casen's unexpectedly badass analysis of the Mandala this episode! This series has been fantastic and is undoubtedly the best FFX content on youtube (besides certain music covers, go check out Marc Papeghin's FFX prog rock haha). Bittersweet to see it come to an end but wouldn't want you guys to get more exhausted than the Fayth! As Japanese Yuna would say.... "Thank You" for all your hard work & collaboration!
Ha, thanks! Honestly, man, I couldn't make sense of it so I didn't bring it up. My guess is that they wanted him there for framing, and it has little bearing on the world or story.
@@CasenSperry No problem dude, that's fair! I guess I'm just tricking myself into thinking there's a deeper easter egg considering how much effort FMVs take, especially an iconic scene. But a purely composition explanation seems also valid, if nothing else!
These were 15 PHENOMENAL videos!
Really enjoyed these episodes on FFX, with it being one of my favourite games. As a fan, there were lots I knew already but i've learned a ton from these episodes. Very excited for MGS! Keep it up lads.
absolutely loved going on this journey with yall- I finally played and finished FFX as these were coming out so playing and listening along has been a blast: thanks so much!!! ♡
This has been the best FFX content on the internet. Been one of my favorite games ever since it came out. Been a blast coming back every week to hang and listen to this analysis. Thanks for this! This FFX series and the Xenogears series are truly next level. Recommended them to several friends. Excited to come back for future games as well.
The building in Zanarkand is totally the same building, the pieces of the blitzball sphere machinery are littered all over (with Yevon icons on them).
Add on top of that we've already covered what we saw before was a dream recollection....so 1000 years plus an inaccurate picture of what it was like...of course it will look different
Yeah it’s def the same building. The archway you walk through is the exact same minus the statues at the beginning. Weird that they missed that. Simple google image search would’ve fixed that lol
That mandala is crazy. No, I don't think you're reading too much into it, nor do I think all that symbolism is an accident or a coincidence. Game design is extremely utilitarian.
Once again, thank you very much Mike and Casen for what was an incredible series on one of my favourite Final Fantasy games. Every single episode I learned something new.
I would also like to thank the people in the comments because I've also learned a lot by reading your thoughts and ideas as well.
Can't wait for Metal Gear Solid. Even though I've never played the hands myself, I've seen reviews and understand how good they are.
This is a very good discussion. I have been following the channel prior to the name brand change and when Casen still made cover guides. Nice to see the channel is still progressing nicely and making a really good discussion on games I thought I firmly understood.
Phenomenal podcast guys. Thank you for covering this masterpiece of a game
You guys are legit best in the biz!
Hey guys! Just wanted to say I LOVE the addition for a final episode where all spoilers are off the table and you guys go back and analyze previous scenes. I would love it going forward if you did this for all your podcasts. Hope everything is well and hope travel is okay for you Mike!
I usually listen to Spotify, but I needed to see what Casen was talking about lol
Great video as always! 15 episodes for FFX is absolutely exciting!
Mike bites his nails a lot HAHAHA get well soon :)
Can't wait for Metal Gear Solid!
One thing to note is Tidus waking up and swimming to the surface mirrors him waking up at Besaid near the beginning. He is "born" into the world both times from Dream Zanarkand
This is the almost the definitive analysis of ffx. I commend you for the level of depth in your videos, there's so much content!
Note: Anima was not an available aeon until kid Seymour arrived in Zanarkand, and his mom was made into a fayth. Just a note regarding how many aeons may be required to complete the pilgrimmage.
This exact thing made me wonder if all of the Aeons are actually someone else's final summoning that failed. As in, they were never able to face or defeat Sin with them.
@@bartandaelus359
If this would have been the case I think the Al-bhed would have not tried to stop summoners from getting the final summoning specificly...
They are concerned about the summoners dieing for a lost cause.
Seymor himself is the perfect example that binding an Aeon onto a stone is not a lethal process...
And yes, Seymor found a way out of that but I don't think Yunalesca wasn't really on board with summoners trying to trick their way out of the cicle and Show them how to create an Aeon instead of fulfilling their part in the cicle of death.
This was a fucking honor and a pleasure. Thanks man.
Casen: "This design means this and that..."
Mandala Artist: "I was just drawing something cool..."
Listening to ya'll talk about this game in such depth reminds me of my high-school English teachers. Having us find meaning between every single thing in literature. lmao.
All jokes aside, this is amazing. I love hearing about this stuff. And hearing how passionate you are about it just makes me more engaged. I would have never found this deep stuff on my own
Late to the game because I've been that busy as well, but appreciate that you still made a podcast despite life getting in the way.
Thank you so much for this series. I’ve learned a lot about appreciation of games and you’ve both really opened my eyes to thinking more about the games I play. Excited to join y’all on your next journey!
1:00:00 the only problem with the Al Bhed being right, and that’s why Tidus sees his mom, is it doesn’t explain why Tidus wouldn’t see Jecht. So there’s gotta be something to the “dead or alive” thing.
What a series! Great job guys! I actually played through the game with you guys and it was a lot of fun.
Casen killed it, you both did such a great job on this podcast. Sad to see it end but I'm excited to see how you unpack MGS.
Wow, honored that my comment got screen time! Hopefully it wasn't overly ranty lol. Loved this series, guys.
RE: Why the Church of Yevon is anti-machina. I wanna say that Maechen talks about this somewhere, but maybe my own memories have been warped over time and it's just my own headcanon, but it's a result of Yu Yevon's original intent with Sin to destroy *only* Bevelle, the larger, more technologically advanced city.
But as Yu Yevon lost his humanity by being at the center of Sin, he forgot about Zanarkand altogether, so Sin instead just attacks any city that's somewhat large and looks technologically advanced. To what's left of Yu Yevon, there's no difference between Kilika village and Zanarkand.
So it's not that Sin was created knowing it would lay waste to Bevelle as well as Zanarkand, but that the destruction of Zanarkand, and Sin/YY becoming an uncontrollable WMD was a total accident. (Sidenote: I also think that the creation of Dream Zanarkand only occurred once the Fayth realized Sin and Yu Yevon were out of control, as a way of mourning and consoling themselves, but that's a whole other bag of worms...)
The church of Yevon outlawing machina is mainly a means of deterring Sin from attacking. The founders knew from Yunalesca that Sin is attracted to large cities with machina, so it became a core tenet of the religion. In general, the teachings seem to have one of two purposes: make civilization look like an unappetizing target for Sin, and to keep the people of Spira in a controllable state. Outlawing machina achieves both.
Can you please explain why you believe Dream Zanarkand was created by the Fayth only after Sin went wild? What else would the Fayth be used for if not to summon that?
It does seem strange to me that Dream Zanarkand would be located in the middle of the southern sea, a whole continent away from both Zanarkand and the Fayth. I suppose it's possible they just thought it made for a good hiding spot, and as far as X-2.5 is concerned Zanarkand had bases on what would become Besaid and Baaj nearby, but I wonder if there's another reason for it.
FFX has been my favourite game of all time since I first played it as an 8 year old (no, I didn't complete it as a kid). Thank you for doing such an excellent podcast analyzing it. I knew it was a game with a lot of depth but I had no idea to what extent the developers poured themselves and their ideas into it. You guys were able to bring all of that to light with the help of the community of course.
Been a fan of the channel for what feels like forever (back when you first did retrospectives for FF games), this was your guys' best work that I have seen.
I've been bingeing a load of podcasts from these guys over the last 2 or 3 weeks. Their analysis is great. Wish I had found them before this.
Hey I just wanted to apologize for a comment I made on the first video of this series (I think it was the first video), where I mentioned Auron and the flask toasting at the beginning. I didn't realize to what length you were avoiding spoilers and I didn't think that fell into spoiler territory at the time since we hardly knew very many of the characters, but I totally understand how it could be. You both did such an amazing job dancing around spoilers throughout the game and I wanted to thank you both for such an amazing journey with FFX!
Glad to see the Zanarkand dome mentioned. I always thought it was the blitzball arena, though as a kid I never made the connection between blitzball and Yevon
It literally plays the Blitzball menu music while inside of it.
I can't bring myself to finish this podcast. Mostly because I dont want this series to end. FFX has meant the world to me and has helped me get through the hardest times in my life. Thank you for breathing new life into the game and the same way I never wanted FFX to end, I never wanted this podcast to end. Thank you guys for everything and you guys have earned a new patron.
I've heard somewhere that your dreams can never create a face that you haven't seen before. Whether you saw someone on TV or real life, that is the only mental database your dream can use. As time goes on, that memory of a face might not look exactly like it did decades ago. Same dream as before, but something is always a bit off.
In Dream Zanarkand, the same Fayth have been dreaming the same dream for 1000 years. The dream world continues to cycle through its old memories and the people of the past to try to make new dreams. Or someone later (after the fall of the Orignial Zanarkand) becomes a Fayth for the final summoning, and that new fayth say 600 yrs later adds a new layer of memories and history to that constant dream. That's why Tidus resembles so much of Shuyin, I think.
Shuyin was a real person from Zanarkand and also a great blitzer. He was arrested and eventually died for trying to save a summoner. His memory ended that way. Maybe his will was weaved into Tidus' conception.
The Fayth said they were so tired of dreaming. I keep thinking that their exhaustion from trying to keep their dream afloat caused some "glitches" in its structure. Maybe that's how Jecht was accidentally Ejected from Dream Zanarkand. Once he learned of Spira & Yevon during his journey with Auron & Braska did his whole plan to end the dream finally start to become real.
Casen the Mandala!! 🤯 I think you nailed everything you said, but could the inner farplane at the corners of the world be Zanarkand? Yuna DID say it was at the world's edge.
Love you guys & thank you for this podcast! Excited for MGS!
What an amazing journey this has been. Thank you very much. I look forward to any more FFX content you produce
Ever since Casen mentioned the mandala at the beginning, I’ve been thinking about it as I played and tried to figure out what it meant. The conclusion I came to is kinda different, though I think Casen’s analysis makes pretty good sense. My take on the mandala is that it is Spira as seen through the eye or Sin, or reflected in his eye. The thrones protruding inwards to me looked like iris dilators and I initially thought they were meant to represent the fayth, who in a way enable continued existence Sin via the final aeon. Furthermore, the mandala is also a microcosm of Sin’s relationship to Spira. I caught the same thing as Casen with the corners of the square connecting to the circle, but I saw that as Sin’s encroachment and presence in Spira, it being a suffocating one. Oh and I totally forgot to mention, the first thing that made me see the circle as Sin was that it looks very similar to the form Sin took in the opening, when he sucked in Auron & Tidus. They were both brought into the center of the “eye” to be transported to Spira. Idk if there’s any legitimacy to my take on the mandala but I will concede that Casen’s analysis is definitely more thorough and likely the accurate one
I'm so happy this game gave us Casen's Mandala Effect Corner
Some of the Rings of the mandala also resemble Ifrit and Ixion too, one ring looks like fire and one like lightning in the order you aquire them moving outward. The small one inside the fire ring I suppose could represent Valefor. The one after lightning doesn't really look like ice... but it does look like headstones... and you get Shiva and Kill Seymor at almost the same time. Maybe the other rings could also represent the Aeons as well.
I think that's probably correct
Sin is strong but the main villain of endwalker would give it a run for it's money. Also some interesting parallels between amaurot and zanarkand
Been listening in on these vids while my tax season kept me busy the 2 months. Easily one of the best games I've ever played. You guys did a great job analyzing it and now I'm going to have to play back through it once my job slows down. Looking forward to a 10-2 series at some point.
9:00 Yunalesca is definitely located where the Blitzball arena was in Zanarkand.
Random graphic artist that designed the mandala: "Phew. Done! Not bad for something I came up with off the top of my head!"
Or Nomura when designing the clothes: sick mandala patterns, lemme borrow a little bit here and there
The mandala also looks like a detailed eyeball, with a symbol within the pupil of the eye. The eye of the world is staring at the summoner, the same way Tidus stares at Yuna, and the same way the eye of the world used to stare at Tidus in Zanarkand (culminating in Sin).
Yes! I didn't mention it, but I think that is probably correct as you can take the layout for the Besaid temple to be the Yevon Symbol (the one I mentioned in previous episodes as being an eye with two wings and a person standing underneath). Well, where the "eye" of that symbol would go puts it right where that Mandala is!
What if the center of the mandala (the one that is a smaller mandala) is describing Yu Yevon? He is a summoner who is the center point of Spira thematically. He summons constantly and every time a new Sin is created, it adds another layer to the spiral and another zoomed in layer to the mandala. As far as the number 12, it could be the 12 active Aeons being summoned. The ten aeons in game plus Tidus and Jecht. Just a thought.
The way I see it is the memory of original Zanarkard is like seed code, kinda like how a procedurally generated game uses it to generate an area, and since its isolated from the rest of the world and limited to concepts the faayth memorized/understood, memory people could live and reproduce for the generations since the summoning and consistently produced the same results. Tidus isn't Shuuyin, he's the descendant of Shuuyin's memory.
Also, the solution to the farplane issue and Tidus's mom is simple.
First of all pyreflies record memories and pool them into the realm of memory that aeons come from, and it's tied to both the far plane and sin. It's like a source of energy/power that is more than just a room under Guadosalam called the Farplane, that's the a point it can be accessed at, another being inside Sin's core. Because all memories are recorded and sent there via pyreflies, it makes sense for Zanarkand dream people to appear there, they're beings compose of the stuff.
Also, when a being is summoned from the memory realm, it exists seperate from the memory pool in the physical realm. When the summoning ends, the aeon returns to the shared pool. The is how the memories of the summoned Zanarkard people can be a part of a memory pool in Spira, but they would still be ignorant of Spira.
Fascinating stuff with the mandala. Maybe the X in the center being in the title of the game was too obvious for you to point out, but that's the only thing I could figure out by myself.
I might've said this a little already in a previous episode's comments, but this podcast for FFX made me appreciate the game so much more than I did. I always have ranked it as my personal third favorite Final Fantasy, but replaying it this year during this podcast REALLY opened my eyes to how amazing it truly is. My two favorite Final Fantasy games, FF7 and FF8, are up there because they came out an impressionable time in my childhood when I could understand the power of storytelling in video games. I could never fully explain why FFX was #3 though, other than that I just liked it more than some of the others. Now being a much older adult, this podcast actually helped me articulate why I love it so much. You guys helped me appreciate and understand things I never picked up on before. So thanks!
I'm really looking forward to MGS. I haven't played it in a very long time, but last year I watched a younger member of Kinda Funny play the first four mainline MGS games all last year, and I had a blast seeing the games through a younger person's eyes who had never played them before. And while they are dated in many respects, especially the first, it's also amazing how influential and ahead of their time they really were in so many respects. I mean, I learned about DARPA in 1999 (I played it a year after it came out) because of this game. What kid in the 90s knew about DARPA? Any kid who played MGS, that's who.
I have a theory about the question involving the life span of the people in the dream state of Zanarkand.
They could have very well had a Groundhog Day/statis for the first 990 years. Then the fayth intervened, broke the cycle, sending Jecht to Spira. Thus, the dream world began a new cycle allowing the dream people to “recreate” and grow, having memories and the like.
In Spira Zanarkand, the glowing fayth rocks outside of Gagazet never faded. Thus, the dream people never died or faded away.
Here's another cool thing you can get from the mandala. The subversion of the role of the summoner. To me, you have the farplane withe the pireflies and the gods in it summoning Spiera, that center area after the separation. Spiera is an aeon. That is why people become pireflies and fiends. The original role of the summoner is to send them to the far plane, a sender if you will. But at some point, they chose to use the energy of the pireflies instead of sending it. Some became the faith, taking on the role sleeping gods, and some "senders" became summoners, bringing forth aeons like the gods created brought forth Speira. That is why there is an "X" there. That's the original role of a summoner, it was crossed out and replaced with a mirror reflecting the world. A summoner (like Yevon) creates an aeon (like dream Zanarkand) using the pireflies in the world like the gods creating Spiera from the pireflies in the farplane.
This is also why the mandala is here, at the first temple. This is where you go to subvert the role of sender and become a summoner.
The difference between dream Zanarkand and Speira is that Speira is a dream of creation has the ability to change like most dreams do, but dream Zanarkand is a dream of remembrance where it it can not change. At least, that's what I get from it.
The idea of Spira itself being an aeon/dream of the gods built from pyreflies from the Farplane is really interesting. Makes me wonder what created the Farplane too. Maybe it's aeons all the way up?
That is fascinating! I mean, the Gods created the world somehow. Very interesting.
Thank you guys for this podcast. Amazing as usual!
I've always debated whether my 2nd favourite Final Fantasy (after FFVII!) is FFVIII or FFX. I enjoyed both series you've done, and after finishing this it has reminded me that FFX is simply a masterpiece. It may even be pushing for my number 1 spot!
Another cool aspect of the center of the mandala is that the small square, in conjunction with the X, creates two overlapping 4’s. A square and an X both have 4 distinct points. 4, in Japanese, often symbolizes death. So two “deaths” allow for the summoner to transcend (4+4=8) death. What two party members are pivotal in Yuna finding an alternative solution? Auron, an unsent, and Tidus, who takes on the role of the sacrifice.
You pass through the very same entrance way into the stadium in Zanarkand, its the same place where Tidus recovers consiousness and meets Auron after his losing his grip on the ledge as the blitzball sphere empties.
Well chaps, it's a been a fascinating ride and you have managed to make my favourite game THAT much better to me!
We started in familiar territory, but holy moly did you guys connect so many small dots!
Mainly all the symbolism that runs through the game, art and game design I can get but even as little as the Hibiscus got my Lightbulbs glowing.
The Mandala blew me away, A hardy salute to Cason for fitting the bill perfectly.
Fantastic studf lads. My brain is ready for MGS.
(For the record, this kinda means we ought to take Nomura a little more seriously now, eh? Hmmm...that'll be tricky)
I would believe that the grey separation of the inner and outer worlds is Sin. Sin is what branches between them. As well, the pillars that flank the 4 anti cardinal directions are the inverse water falls in the far plane. Those points connect the outer and inner far plane.
Oh, that's good!
I thought the black thing surrounding the square could be Sin, like a dark shadow covering the world.
perhaps the flower at the centre is yu yevon and the box is sin (the armour protecting him) the x represents the fact the yu-yevon has no self control. that would mean that the church is containing it all. that would likely be the kind of mandala the church would design for propeganda
I toyed with the idea of Sin being the center of the mandala, and it can work, for sure, as Yu Yevon is a summoner, and death is at the center, and the walls are like armor. Sin even presents himself as a giant blitzball sphere, and the Mandala can be read as being blitzball for sure. That interpretation is certainly valid. But the flower imagery is so powerful on Yuna, being her character design and even her name, so I felt that Yuna transcending the world fit better there than Yu Yevon transcending the world, despite that making more sense in the world of the game. It could be that their legend of Yu Yevon has contained within it a hidden possibility that a summoner will free them all from Sin, from the inside.
Thank you guys so much for doing this. FFX has ment a lot to me. I have enjoyed living through it again in this series. Well done Gentlemen.
Fascinating! Thank you so much for your insight and videos. Would love to hear more final fantasy content discussion :)
Just finished Casen's explanation of the mandala and my mind is blown and I have some thoughts and questions.
I wonder if it's a coincidence that the mandala is centered by an "x" meaning "death" and that this is FF10 or "X."
I also wonder what the significance of the mandala being seen in Yuna's first acquired aeon's temple, Valefor, is. Valefor is a flying aeon with no particular association to an element, and Yuna summons it when she does her leap of faith during the wedding scene to save herself. Does this imply anything else relevant to Yuna overcoming (specifically her own) death maybe?
Casen said that Tidus has crosses all over his body, and given that he ends up becoming the sacrifice at the end, and the cross Casen mentions on Yuna's outfit being removed in the HD version perhaps allude to Yuna's death being a bait and switch with Tidus... maybe?
Because also he is "reborn" kind of at the end of the game, so perhaps that tinier circle and square thing Mike brought up also includes Tidus' possibility of transcending his death in a manner even more reminiscent of Jesus' resurrection?
Parts of the mandala that seem related to death appear to be in white (the stamen that the summoner stands on) and some parts appear to be in black (the semi-circle bits around around square) and I was wondering is that related to how in the West we see death as being represented by black but Eastern cultures see the reverse? Or am I reading too much into that?
Also why on earth did the developers decide to scrap the impact and significance of all this brilliance for Eien no Daishou and Will?? WHY. IT MAKES NO SENSE.
I don't recommend anyone looking those up. In my humble opinion, they're rubbish.
Otherwise I'm going to finish the podcast in relative peace. Thanks Mike and Casen, your content is awesome and you guys are awesome!
Edit: also, Casen, you need to play FFXIV and just go ham with the symbolism and connections and Nietzsche ideas. Or I need you to.
Thank you Mike and Casen for these podcasts.
1: Not to weigh to much on X-2, but I believe that Maechen is an unsent in that game. That would fit with the symbols on his garb and with those implications from the mandala.
2: I believe that when in the farplane, pyreflies resonate with memories and dreams of people in a similar way they do with the Fayth. The result is a summoning of the person's memory. The living person acts in place of the fayth and the pyreflies replicate the person's dreams, just not as complete and the summoning is transient and temporary. However, in cases where the memory is tied to strong emotion (like Jyscal) it can manifest. But this only happens when the pyreflies have the template of the dead person already within their collective (being sent). Otherwise they wouldn't be able to recreate the dream.
3: Is it ever explained HOW buff daddy Jecht gets out of dream Zanarkand?
for 3. he was out on his boat to train and somehow got sent into spira when he went to far in a storm.
@@megamike15 Is that canon within the text of X or is that something that was added later? Because it sounds... kinda crap and not in line with what X would have done.
@@bartandaelus359 they say he got lost at sea in one of the flashbacks.
@@bartandaelus359 what do you think X would have done then?
I thoroughly enjoyed each of the episodes you provided us with. Might replay this game again and follow along with each episodes.
Hoping for a bonus episode with the optional content someday. Loved this podcast, looking forward to MGS! Travel safe.
I'm watching this 9 months later.
Casen should check out elder futhark. The rune for G is an X, and the meanings for this rune in particular mirrors and expands on much of what he has said about this mandala and the themes of ffX itself. Futhark runes are interesting, being a combination of hieroglyphs, phonetic glyphs and sacred geometry. Seeing the recurring themes of norse summons, it's entirely possible Square was drawing from this as well.
Love your podcasts, both of you. Thanks
Maybe it was mentionned many time before, but the idea to run electricity to shape water is also seen in Riven: The Sequel to Myst, where water in the world of Riven react in the same way.
Hearing ya'lls retrospective made me appreciate the game even more. This game has one of the tighest and best written stories in FF.
1:00:30 One point of the farplane sceene is that people that are not dead/send can not show up! When the people in the far plane are made from YOUR memories, how does the far plane know who is dead or not, when YOU don't know it?
Jecht does NOT appear because Auron told him to be Sin, Tidus just has not accepted it, but Tidusses mother DOES and Tidus is schocked about it, because to his knowledge she may have survived Sins attack on Zanarkhandt. (Rewatching the Sceene it is implied she died from lovelost-sickness - RIP)
1:19:30 Why are peole so hung up that Dream Zhanarkhandt is a place that follows physical reality, look at how the inside of sin is a fever dream and we can not see guado salam from the far plane.
On why dreams can appear in the farplane but the living do not, I think that the pyreflies can recreate anything they've touched, retaining a sort of memory of what they have been before. Since things in Spira are made of pyreflies, the ones that make up a living person have not yet returned to the collective, the memory hasn't yet been taken back to the collective. But when they die and return that memory is now accessible to the whole, even able to be summoned, which is probably what happens at the farplane. Since "dreams" (summons) are also made of pyreflies there's not really much difference, when they die those pyreflies take the memory of what they were back just the same, they probably would do so for any object in Spira.
Thanks so much for this amazing series Mike and Casen! Excited for Metal Gear =D
@40:47 One problem with this interpretation though is that only two of the maesters are dead, Seymour and Mika. Unless you intend it to foreshadow the death of Kinoc and Kelk, but this goes against the general interpretation Casen gives with respect to influence from the farplane. In any case, kudos to the interpretative skills. While some of it may be looser, there is no doubting at least some intention here.
Never really seen any reason to fuss over the Shinra stuff. It's not that X takes place on the same world as VII, it takes place in the same universe or galaxy. Which ultimately does not matter all that much for either game (with VII already having a more cosmic approach to worldbuilding with Jenova as an alien parasite), and is just a fun little easter egg.
it's a shame we didn't get to hear your guys thoughts on anima and the baaj temple as well as the temple of the stolen fayth. but lots of great great stuff thank you guys!
Fantastic series!
I never realized until this point, that Sin was a spiritual weapon with the instinct to react to/ destroy machina... in the same way that Vegnagun was a machina weapon programmed to react to/ destroy humans/heightened emotion. They are the two superweapons of the war. More yin and yang themes there!
hearing about the zanderkand-bivell wa as they read it is interesting because that story basically sounds like a traditional jrpg story but then ffx is the aftermath and healing of all that. and though i never finished x2 it seems x2 explores the "well we saved the world now what, now who am i now that that piece of my identity has shifted so drastically" which is cool
Not sure if you guys have seen it but, Valkyrie Profile Leneth is getting a port to the PS4 and PS5 because the new Valkyrie Elysium game. I think it would be a great game for this podcast format, albeit with the asterisk that you need to get ending A for the whole plot. And given the fact the game is coming out in the 29th of september, there is time for you to plan for the podcast to coincide with the release of a bit after it.
This is great news, hopefully with it's release, Valkyrie Profile's price will finally come down a bit after it exploded during covid.
@@nickburose8286 Not sure if it will, because it seems the port will be digital only, and for now it is only a bonus of the special edition of Elysium, with a promise of being sold at a later date
@@lucasm4790 I checked the store page for the digital edition and it claims that the Lenneth re-release will also be sold separately
mike has been the goat duh but dude casen you're the fuckin man. godspeed boys. you're doing such good shit.
Thanks for the in-depth analysis Casen. Very interesting and a lot to think about and consider and now I'm interested in learning about symbolism.
Can we get a proper list of the books mentioned in the description? I'm seeing some books with similar names and not sure which author is correct.
Jung has a book with a chapter on the Mandala. Believe it's just called "Dreams."
Jung's "Man and his Symbols" is a good starting point but I also highly recommend the "Memories, Dreams and Recollections" audio book because it's so easy to listen to and gives a lot of foundational context for his ideas in other works.
The Jung works mentioned here are great. The ones I mentioned in the podcast are A Beginners Guide to Constructing the Universe, A Dictionary of Symbols, and Sacred Geometry
Thank you all! Definitely gonna look into consuming these!
Late to the commenting party, but my take on the Farplane not showing you living people is that people's souls seem to be made of pyreflies, and the reason you don't see living people in the Farplane is that the pyreflies carrying the information of that person's soul haven't returned to resonate with the thoughts of the person seeking to see them yet. You're sending out the signal, but the receiver is still out in the world, not inside the Farplane.
I am forever glad I found this podcast. FFX is one of my top 5 favorite games (possibly even #1) of all time. Have two people getting so into the story and looking at nearly every detail has been such an amazing ride. Thank you guys so much for talking about it and glad to see you guys had so much fun talking about it. whenever play X-2 I would love to see it on this podcast. Definitely gonna check out the X-2 playlist.
Now to get into metal gear solid 😂👌🏻here we go
Thank you so much guys this was the best series yet!
thank you for the hard effort guys really love the podcast and this series in particular
I a way Tidus was also a Christ figure. He disappeared after defeating sin. A beautiful allegory for ridding humanity of it's sins requiring the sacrifice of Christ to do so. Tidus was also an allegory for the immaculate birth and how this soul that was gods sun left their world and entered ours.
@S. Both Christ and Tidus were skilled at breaking Sin’s ankles
@S. No one told you? Blitzball is the official sport of heaven. Lol
On the Blitz all arena in Zanarkand: I do believe it's the same one. It's been a thousand years remember, I think it's entirely possible that the statues that were so iconic in the opening were simply destroyed or lost to time.
It also plays the same music from the Blitzball menu which ties in very heavily to the sport as religion theory.
Thanks for all the great podcasts, wish you guys the best!